Steal the North: A Novel (11 page)

Spencer is waiting on the outside steps that lead up to my apartment—my breath catches—when I return with a dull headache instead of produce and, instead of graded papers, the strong desire to drink a bottle of cheap wine and crawl self-piteously into Emmy’s shitty bed for the remainder of the day.

“I’m sorry, Kate,” he says right away, “for the comment about your furniture.”

“No biggie.”

“It
is
a biggie. I had
no
right to insult your stuff. I’m sorry.”

“My stuff forgives you.” I invite him inside.

He still hasn’t hugged me. Maybe he only stopped by to make a formal good-bye.

“Good,” he says, sitting down on the couch. I point the floor fan toward him and turn it up to high. He works outside in the heat most days, but inside, he likes to be cool. I offer him a beer, but he shakes his head. I’m heated from my walk. I sit in the wicker chair. “Good,” he repeats. “Because I want you to bring it all with you.”

“Bring what—where?”

“Your furniture. You can bring it all to the house I’m building us.”

I wish I were sitting on something more solid than wicker. What did he just say?

“I’ve been building it for almost a year. My brother’s been helping. I had our entire crew there last month.”

“What are you talking about?” He’s more wound up than he gets on his rare days off when he accidentally drinks a work morning amount of coffee. He also seems more confident than usual. Which, I have to admit, is incredibly attractive.

“I built us a house, Kate. With a big room for Emmy. And an office for you, so you won’t have to keep all your books in the living room.” He’s talking fast. “And there’s air conditioning.” He wipes his brow.

“Seriously, Spencer.” It takes me a minute. “
What
are you talking about?”

“But you have to marry me first. Or agree to marry me before we move in. We can surprise Emmy when she gets back from Washington.”

I want to get up and pace—match his energy, which I usually can—but right now I simply can’t budge.

“Oh, and I bought us tickets to Europe. We leave right after your summer session.” He just keeps going. “I’d planned to propose marriage to you in Paris. In a museum or someplace romantic.” Spencer isn’t into museums, plays, or readings. He likes ball games, sports bars, and hardware stores. “But I can’t wait. I can’t fucking sleep.”

I never thought I’d see Europe. Sure, Emmy and I talk about going there. I collect maps. But just getting to California was enough for me.

“You’re crazy,” I say.

“So are you.”

“Well, yes.”

“Why did you call twice last night and then hang up?” he asks. “I knew it was you. And the night before and the night—”

“I get the point.”

“I don’t care about your past, Kate. I only care about
now
.”

I’ve rarely cried in front of Spencer. But last night I dreamed I was back in that truck stop, and when I woke up, my teeth throbbed. I wanted Spencer to rub my back. I thought I was more capable of being alone. I should’ve made some girlfriends. The few times in college that I invited a fellow female student over to study, Emmy looked sad and left out. I wonder if Beth has girlfriends at the church.

“Let’s give Emmy a real home her last year before college,” he says.

“Emmy has a
real
home right here.” Why can’t I stop crying?

“You’re right. That came out wrong. I’m sorry.” I can tell he’s sincere. He talks slower. “I want to be your husband and Emmy’s dad. It’s
all
I’ve wanted since I first met you.”

He’s proved as much, no matter my insecurities and bullshit.

“You’ve worked hard for years,” he says. “You’ve taken great care of Emmy. Let me take care of you now. Both of you.”

“I like my books in the living room.”

He laughs, tenderly. “I’ll add bookshelves.”

“Why me, Spencer?”

“You and Emmy—you’re different. Maybe because of where you guys were born. I don’t know. There’s something—”

“I’m not special. I’m ruined.”

“You’re
not
ruined. Far from it.” He looks a little tired, suddenly. “You’re very alive, Kate. And you’re special to me.”

“The Bible says a nonvirtuous woman is like rottenness in her husband’s bones.”

He laughs again tenderly. “Since when do you quote the Bible?”

Every day in my head—regrettably.

“Come here, baby,” he says.

I used to hate being called that by guys, but never by Spencer. I go to him.

I sit down close beside him on the couch, but he doesn’t want to touch. He pulls a small velvet box out of his pocket. “I’m not going to get down on my knee,” he says. “Last time you rejected me before even seeing the ring.” He says his brother has never stopped giving him hell about that. “I’m going to leave this here on the coffee table.” He puts it down. “It’s a different ring, by the way.” He stands up. “I’ll give you a week to think about it. If you don’t call me, or if you call and hang up, then this is good-bye for good, Kate.” He means it. “But I hope you’ll still let me see Emmy—take her to games and stuff.” His voice falters for the first time. His love for Emmy has grown deep, or maybe it always has been.

I stand up too, hoping he’ll at least hug me. I suddenly want him to hold me very badly—because I’m afraid I won’t call him. I’m afraid the part of me that’s still stuck back in that truck stop parking lot won’t let me call him. And then he won’t ever show up again on my steps. And when Emmy goes away to college, I’ll be all alone and miserable. Or else I’ll become too loose and split open with men. Spencer doesn’t hug me, but I can tell he wants to comfort me. I’ve so rarely let him. He touches the ends of my hair that I tugged at last time. “Know that I’ll always love you.” He can barely speak. “That I love you
more
.” He drops his hands, then squares his shoulders. “But I can’t do part time any longer.”

He’s God about to spew me from his mouth.

The first weeks I started climbing into truckers’ cabs for money were by far the most shocking and degrading in my life. Prior to that, Jamie was the only boy I’d kissed, let alone slept with, and sex with him had been romantic, despite being tinged with fear that I was losing him to his father and the land. Jamie whispered his love while inside me and even more passionately afterward. Truckers slobbered on my neck, grunted vile and nasty things that I’d never heard before, and the physical pain was worse than giving birth. I do not exaggerate. I thought I was tough. I thought I’d made myself strong as a young girl so that all the Baptist crap about females being the “weaker vessel” and “in subjection to your own husbands” and “shame-faced” would never apply to me. To Jamie Kagen I submitted willingly and sweetly. In cramped cabs with truck drivers and their road smells, large hands, and male strength, I was utterly defenseless. After my seventh trick, the most holy of numbers, I drove straight home to Beth, instead of trying to calm my nerves first by drinking beside the lake. The truckers gave me alcohol, and so did the kind, pockmarked dishwasher in his
BLACK SABBATH
T-shirt. I needed my sister that day in a way I can’t explain. When I got to the trailer, I didn’t rush into her arms. I curled up on the sofa, trying to ignore the pangs between my legs, and watched her fold laundry.

For three weeks she’d been questioning me: Why wasn’t I eating? How did I tear a second blouse? How had I gotten so much extra tip money? Was it a man, the same man, leaving me such big tips? Was he a kind man like Boaz had been to Ruth, letting her glean wheat in his fields? When Beth began to question me that particular day, I sat up, trying not to wince, and pulled more twenties from my apron pockets.
Here, sister, are my sheaves of wheat, and the fields I’m gleaning aren’t Jamie’s.

“I follow truckers out to their rigs,” I said.

“What?” She stopped folding laundry.

“I turn tricks.”

“Tricks?”

“Sex, Beth. I have sex with truckers.” I pushed up the sleeves on my white waitress blouse to show her the bruises on my upper arms. I didn’t show her the ones on my thighs.

“Oh, Kate.” She looked horrified. “Kate,
no
.” She covered her mouth and shook her head. She kept shaking her head and staring at me. Then, with as much authority as she could muster, she said, “You’re
never
going back to that truck stop. Do you hear me? Matt and I can cover the rent.”

“I still owe the hospital. I have layaway payments at Kmart.”

“The money will show up,” she said. “I can cut back on groceries.”

“No, you can’t.” I tried to eat at work to save groceries. The cook would sneak me a chicken fried steak with gravy or a patty melt with the bowl of soup or side of fries I actually paid for. “And
how
will the money show up?”

“Matt can ask his parents.”

“They’ve done enough.”

“I can go to work at one of the factories,” she offered.

“In your long dress? Who will watch Emmy? And the factories are making layoffs, not hiring. Remember, I tried?”

“I’ve been praying.”

“Don’t bother. I found a way to make money.”

I waited for her to start sobbing. Or to quote the Bible. She did neither. She picked up the plastic basket of folded laundry and chucked it across the front room and into the kitchen. It was such an unexpected thing for her to do—like Mom, Beth rarely got angry—that I actually started laughing. Just for a second and not cruelly.

“You’re
not
going back there,” she insisted. “I’m going to tell Matt everything. He’ll know what to do.”

I jumped up. “You can’t tell Matt.” I grabbed her arm. “I couldn’t bear the shame.” She looked determined. “If you do, I’ll—I’ll leave town.”

I didn’t mean it.

Her determined look turned back to one of horror. She grabbed my other arm. “You can’t leave me.”

“Then promise you’ll never tell Matt. This is between sisters.”

She promised. Then she tried to get me to promise her that I’d never again turn a trick. I told her I’d ask for more shifts at work. But I’d already asked the manager twice for more hours and been shot down on both occasions because I refused to follow him out to his Bronco.

“Go take a hot bath,” Beth said. “I’ll make us grilled cheese sandwiches.”

After Mom died, Beth and I ate grilled cheese sandwiches every day. It was all we knew how to cook until Dad insisted I learn to fry a pound of ground beef and plug in a crockpot.

I took a bath, and then we ate our sandwiches together, sitting close, as if we were still little girls. We savored each bite, as if our white bread, margarine, and American cheese sandwiches were gourmet. As if our problems had been solved and the very next evening I wouldn’t climb into another trucker’s cab. As if I would never leave her.

And I wouldn’t have, sister. You know this. Only you know this.

Reuben

As soon as I get out of the shower, I’m heading next door to help Emmy make a birthday cake for her aunt. It’ll be the sixth time we’ve hung out, and yes, I am keeping track: two times the first Sunday we met; then Tuesday morning for a few hours after her aunt left to clean the church; then Wednesday evening, when her aunt and uncle went to prayer meeting and she had me drive her into town for cake supplies; then Friday, the best day, for almost five hours when her aunt left again to help at the church. The hours I’m not with Emmy, I’m thinking about her.

I think about how she’s the quietest girl I’ve ever known. She didn’t say more than two words the entire drive into town, but she smiled whenever I looked over at her, which I did a lot. Usually with quieter girls, I try to talk more to compensate and to bring them out of their shells. I don’t feel the need with Emmy. She’s not in a shell. Well, maybe she just recently crawled from under her mom’s shell. I can’t tell for sure. But I don’t think she’s ever hidden herself intentionally from the world.

Emmy does hide her body a bit more than most girls her age who aren’t overweight, and even some who are. She probably doesn’t dress quite as modestly in California. Don’t get me wrong, she doesn’t, like her aunt, wear big, baggy dresses that could double as wagon tents. She wears tank tops, for example. Who doesn’t love a girl in a tank top, right? And nothing else, Ray would say. But she always has a shirt overtop—unbuttoned at least. I’d like to see her shoulders and maybe a bra strap. I got a peek at her belly button once when I snagged her hippie hat and teasingly made her reach high for it. I turn the water to cool. Some girls, and especially some women, usually the curvy type, have bodies that don’t stop speaking, even when hidden under layers. Emmy’s body isn’t like that. She’s thin, and I would say graceful, only she’s also kind of clumsy. Guys at her school might walk right past her without a backward glance. But her body definitely speaks to me. I turn the water to cold. I can’t tell if she’s a virgin. I’ve never really cared about that with girls, as long as the white ones haven’t slept with half the football team and the Indian ones haven’t slept with Benji.

My hair is still damp when I knock on the screen door.

Emmy answers in a dress and an apron—like in a sitcom from the 1950s. It works for me.

“All you need now is a strand of pearls,” I tease after she invites me inside. She fingers her diamond heart necklace. “Diamonds work too. Nice apron.”

“I like my apron,” she says, blushing a little.

“I do too.” I try not to imagine her naked underneath it.

She offers me an apron, but I tell her I’m wearing an old T-shirt. I usually only get new clothes once a year, in the fall before school, unless we happen to get Indian Money during the year and Mom decides not to give any to my younger sister Lena’s white dad, who seems to know exactly when to show up repentant and broke. As a result, most years, by summer, my two pairs of jeans and three T-shirts look like shit. Last summer I bought new clothes with my job money. I’d planned as well to buy my own football gear at the end of last summer, so I didn’t have to borrow the school’s falling-apart gear and bucket helmet, but I wound up paying the rent for Mom instead. I have to figure out a way to make money again this summer, and quickly, now that I kind of got a girl. Maybe I can mow lawns, like when I was ten—fuck—or something. The summer I was twelve, Ray and I made bank tending horses for some white ranchers.

Maybe Teresa was right about Emmy’s aunt. Except for the Bible verses written on index cards and taped on the cabinet doors and the fridge, Beth’s kitchen looks like a medicine man’s with bundled herbs hanging to dry and small vials and jars. This is the first time I’ve been inside the aunt’s trailer. Emmy hung with me inside Teresa’s trailer on Friday. I was a little embarrassed at first—okay, a lot. But at least Teresa’s floor and ceiling aren’t soft and rotting like trailers on the rez. The kids and I cleaned the place, and I warned them to leave the couch free for Emmy and me. They didn’t listen, except Grace, the oldest, who kept too much distance. Kevin, Audrey, and the baby, Emilio, whose name I always pronounce with a cholo accent to piss off Teresa, crowded Emmy on the couch. She didn’t seem to mind. I got the floor. We watched a couple reruns of
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
and one stupid episode of
Murder, She Wrote
, which unfortunately Teresa has the girls stuck on. Emmy had never seen either show before. She and her mom don’t have cable in California, which is odd because she doesn’t seem religious or poor.

“I’m glad we chose cherry chip,” Emmy says now, referring to the box of cake mix we picked out together in the store. “Are you sure you want to help?”

I assure her I do. I assured her I did on the drive home from the store when she said it might be boring for me. As if.

“Oh, look,” she exclaims. “I found this muffin tin way in the back of the cupboard. I thought—” She pauses, maybe a little embarrassed by her enthusiasm over a tin pan. I try not to grin. “I thought I’d make a cupcake for each of the kids.” She nods toward Teresa’s house. “There should be enough batter.”

“Cool.” I try to act casual. She says we can dye the frosting with food coloring, a different color for each kid. “That’s cool.” I nod when she asks if I know their favorite colors, even though I have no idea.

I get the eggs and milk out of the fridge, and she gets the oil from the pantry. She prefers to mix the cake batter by hand, she says, with a wooden spoon. She has to at home in California because her mom refuses to have an electric mixer in the house.

“Is the professor afraid of electronics?” There’s old people on the rez who are. There’s also people on the reservation without electricity—despite how Coulee Dam is in our backyard.

“We have an electronic pencil sharpener,” she says. “I think it’s more a feminist thing. Betty Friedan rather than Betty Crocker.”

“Who?”

She asks me to mix for a while. Her arms—pathetically, she says—always get tired. I oblige, flexing my muscles a little more than necessary.

“That was fun,” she says after we get the cupcakes and the cake into the oven and set the timer. “I’ve never baked with anyone my age before.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.” She smiles. “I’ve organized bake sales for clubs at school. But I don’t really have any friends.”

“Get out of here.” I think she’s joking. She’s not. “Why?”

She shrugs her shoulders.

“I think you’re great.” I didn’t mean to say that out loud. I quickly recover. “You have a boyfriend.”

“It’s not the same.” We start making the frosting.

“It can be.”

“I don’t think so.” She’s told me some about her boyfriend when I’ve asked. She seems pretty loyal, despite having to try a little too hard to hide the fact he’s a fucking chump. “Here, taste this,” she says. “See if it needs more vanilla.”

Jesus. Is she really offering me her finger with frosting on it?

“It’s perfect.” I hold her wrist loosely. I wonder what she’d do if I kissed her. Or put her finger back in my mouth. She’s looking at me as if she might not mind.

Stepping back, she says, “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

The phone rings—I’m almost relieved—before I can respond.

It’s her mom. I gesture toward the front door and mouth, “Should I go?”

She shakes her head.

I try to act busy with the frosting. Ray’s always been my best friend. We spent hours and hours of our childhoods together: on the trampoline in his mom’s front yard in Nespelem, or under the trampoline after trying to summon Big Foot; at our great-aunt’s place along the Sanpoil River; in the back of a rusted-over truck and on our bikes around Omak, mostly on the rez side; with his dad’s ponies. As for others, I don’t have a problem making friends, but something does feel different with Emmy. I’ve got a giant crush on her, sure, but I’ve had crushes before. I had it pretty bad once for one of Teresa’s friends. I finish mixing yellow, which I claimed was Emilio’s favorite. I try not to listen to the conversation, but I can’t help it. My eyes lock on Emmy’s after she tells her mom that she likes it here. Who is this girl? I’m not sure she herself knows—she just asked her mom why she was never told who she was named after. I can’t imagine that. Indians might have too many names, but we damn sure know who or what we’re named after or for. If not, how can a name hold any power?

Emmy’s voice suddenly changes, and she looks away. She turns and lowers her voice. I concentrate, like when I’m hunting with the elders. Emmy says something into the phone about a ceremony and admits to being scared. I should leave. Many ceremonies, by definition, should be kept private. I head for the door. She puts her hand over the receiver and asks me to please stay. I have the feeling I could never say no to this girl. And not because she’s white, as Benji would claim. I broke it off with the rodeo queen, not the other way around. I grab the flowered apron off the table and put it on. Emmy laughs, and I curtsy.

“She’s your only sister,” I hear her say. It sounds like she’s trying to convince her mom to call back later and tell her only sister happy birthday.

White people.

I read the Bible verse directly in front of me. I’ve been trying to ignore them, and not just here and now, but everywhere and always. This index card looks way newer than the others, which have yellowed: “For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail . . . the voice of the daughter of Zion.”

What the fuck?

Emmy’s eyes are watery when she hangs up the phone, but she pretends they’re not. We get the cupcakes out of the oven and then the cake fifteen minutes later. We leave on the aprons, my suggestion, while the cakes cool and we run next door to check on the kids, who giggle, even Grace, who tries not to. By the time we finally get the cakes frosted, there’s only ten minutes to spare before Emmy’s aunt and uncle are due to return. We take off the aprons. She looks so sweet in her dress that I want to hug her. I’ve been wanting to hug her all week. “What ceremony were you talking about on the phone?” I ask.

“Oh, that. Nothing.”

“But you’re scared.” I hold a plate with four cupcakes.

“No.”

“I heard you say you were.”

“It’s embarrassing, Reuben.” She blushes.

“I’m Indian. We have ceremonies for ceremonies—for ceremonies.”

“Cool ones, probably.”

“Not always.”

She opens the screen door for me.

“Tell me tonight then,” I say. “I mean, if you want to get together.” She nods. “And make out,” I joke. Not really.

She punches my arm, lightly. Most of the girls on the rez, and the cowgirls in Omak, have brothers and know how to wallop, even in jest. I feel Emmy’s punch, though, in my gut.

She brings me a giant slice of cake when we meet that evening by the bench in her aunt’s garden. We have only an hour and a half. Would her aunt and uncle really care that she’s hanging out with the neighbor kid, even if I am Indian? I don’t think she’s asked them, and I don’t want to seem pushy. But shit, we’re both going to be seniors come fall. She told me her mom doesn’t know she has a boyfriend, even though they’ve been going out for six months. When I asked her if her boyfriend in California is white, she nodded, but said her mom would probably like him better if he weren’t.

Only in California.

“Let’s go for a walk,” I suggest now after finishing my cake. Even as hungry as I am—Teresa’s cooking sucks compared with Mom’s, and we’re low on groceries—the frosting tasted better on her finger. She wears the same dress she had on this morning, as I was hoping. “You have different shoes?” I ask. She’s worn flip-flops every time we’ve been together. She goes inside and changes into low-top black Converse. Only the punk or oddball girls at school wear Converse, rather than Sketchers or Adidas. But somehow, Emmy pulls them off with her dress.

We start walking down the road, not toward town, but the other direction. Irrigation sprinklers are clunking full blast in the potato field. Emmy stops to look. The leafy plants are still small on the raised mounds. She says, “The water arching that way is kind of pretty.”

“I guess, maybe, in a farmish sort of way.”

She laughs. “How cold do you think that water is?”

“Why, do you want to run through the sprinklers?”

“No way.” She shakes her head adamantly.

Her uncle’s work truck says
BASIN IRRIGATION
. He’s often wet or even covered in mud after work. I think he works on farm pumps.

We start walking again. “It’s Columbia water,” I tell her.

“What do you mean?”

“The arching water is from the Columbia River.”

“How do you get there?”

“You have to drive. It’s north, west, and south of here. The river curves to avoid this area. Do you blame it?” She looks around, but I don’t think she hates what she sees. “It’s a cold river. It used to be colder.”

“What happened?”

“I’ll take you there sometime.” She must want to stall talking about the ceremony.

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.” I brush a mosquito from her arm. “They’re going to eat you alive with your perfume.” She put on a spray of perfume when she ran back into the trailer to change her shoes. It’s not heavy or musky. Usually she smells a little like peppermint, shampoo, soap, herbs. But right now she smells like fruit—apples? berries?—and it makes me fucking dizzy. “Hasn’t your aunt or uncle taken you for any drives yet?”